How to Configure Network Bonding or Teaming in Ubuntu

Network Interface Bonding is a mechanism used in Linux servers which consists of binding more physical network interfaces in order to provide more bandwidth than a single interface can provide or provide link redundancy in case of a cable failure. This type of link redundancy has multiple names in Linux, such as Bonding, Teaming or Link Aggregation Groups (LAG).

To use network bonding mechanism in Ubuntu or Debian based Linux systems, first you need to install the bonding kernel module and test if the bonding driver is loaded via modprobe command.

$ sudo modprobe bonding

Check Network Bonding in Ubuntu

On older releases of Debian or Ubuntu you should install ifenslave package by issuing the below command.

$ sudo apt-get install ifenslave

To create a bond interface composed of the first two physical NCs in your system, issue the below command. However this method of creating bond interface is ephemeral and does not survive system reboot.

In order to activate the bond interface, either restart network service, bring down the physical interface and rise the bond interface or reboot the machine in order for the kernel to pick-up the new bond interface.